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Google Businesses

Google Broke Up a Vietnamese Con Scheme After an Employee Was Scammed Buying a Bluetooth Headset (cnbc.com) 58

Posted by msmash from the wronged-the-wrong-guy dept.
A Google executive found a high-end Bluetooth headset selling at a steep discount on Google Shopping website earlier this year. He placed the order, but much to his surprise, the headset never arrived at his doorstep. He tried calling the seller, but it turned out that the number listed on the website was disconnected, and the merchant wasn't based in the US, as the website had indicated. Instead of kicking the seller off the website, Google launched an investigation and it soon realized the problem ran too deep. From a report: But instead of simply banning the bad actor from listing new products, Google Shopping's trust and safety team initiated a global probe that ultimately tracked down 5,000 merchant accounts wrapped up in a sophisticated scheme to defraud users. "I think we caught them right at the tip of when they were trying to scale up," Saikat Mitra, Google Shopping's director of trust and safety, told CNBC. The story, which Mitra is sharing publicly for the first time, reflects Google's never-ending battle against scams, a fight that requires engineers and their increasingly sophisticated machine learning tools.

It also illustrates the risks that consumers face as Google aggressively tries to win back product searches from Amazon and stay relevant in the future of e-commerce. Although Google Shopping may look like a marketplace, it really isn't. Amazon and eBay operate shopping platforms that connect sellers with buyers and offer protections like money-back guarantees. Google, by contrast, sends shoppers off its site after they click on an item, and thus has no visibility into what happens after the transaction.
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Google Broke Up a Vietnamese Con Scheme After an Employee Was Scammed Buying a Bluetooth Headset More

Google Broke Up a Vietnamese Con Scheme After an Employee Was Scammed Buying a Bluetooth Headset

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  • Don't rip off bigshots (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04, 2018 @01:52PM (#56555444)

    A Google executive...

    If that to you or I - peasants - we'd be given the run around and basically told to "suck it".

    • Goddamn it!! (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If that to you or I ...

      I meant: If that HAPPENED to you or I ...

      WTF?

      I can re-read shit multiple times and still not catch stupid shit like that.

      Is there some designer "issue" I can claim to have or am I just some inattentive dipshit?

      Don't worry, I call myself the latter ALL the time. Teachers used to really berate me and later so did my employers.....

      I tried mindfulness training, but all that revealed was how many times I breathed between fuck ups.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tattood ( 855883 )
      Sadly, this is probably true. If it was anyone who didn't work at Google, this would not be a story.

  • wow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 04, 2018 @01:52PM (#56555446)

    After years of scam, google exec had to get scammed to start any investigation. Who cares about 100.000 complains they received earlier...

  • John Doe: (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I got scammed!
    Google: Too bad.

    Google Exec:
    I got scammed!
    Google: Let's find the scum and make a press release of how much good we're doing!

    • 5000 scam merchants doesn't sound like the tip.

      • It depends. Setting up "merchants" can be automated just like sending millions of spams. You just create a script to set them up from a template that is varied by a table in a database. I see "websites" all the time that are obviously just rows in a database created to build 1000s of sites with hours of work just to match a search term now and then and achieve a view on a paid ad.

        One thing that usually gives these away is that they aren't paying for good domain names. I won't shop at anything that is xyz.un

        • I see "websites" all the time that are obviously just rows in a database created to build 1000s of sites with hours of work just to match a search term now and then and achieve a view on a paid ad.

          That there are websites that are just rows in a database designed to build lots of sites to match search terms, that much is obvious and well known.

          Your claim about the purpose is substantially off, however. In fact, it mistakes who is lying, and to who. Consider: Who gets paid to make those sites? What is their job called? Who does it benefit, in what way? And what about the ads, who benefits when the ad gets clicked on? Is it the same person that is benefiting from the fake sites, or is the person who get

      • Or at least, if it really is just the tip why would they be admitting it so readily?

        That implies that the problem, which they previously were just ignoring, is really really huge and even when they try to do something, they have little impact.

        But coming from a Director of Trust and Safety, that admission is truly frightening. They're admitting that it's a huge problem and to being barely able to impact it, and that's the spin designed to make you trust them! Z0MG!

  • Google shopping wants to compete with amazon.com or fleabay? Seems unlikely, as google doesn't actually sell products. It's a search engine that tricks users into thinking there is a store hosted on google.com. Not only that, but many of the results actually end up being listings on fleabay or amazon.com in the first place. If google wants to compete in e-commerece, then they will prob have to.. you know, engage in actual e-commerce.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      Does it really trick anybody?

      I use it specifically because it is a search engine.

      It aggregates many stores, and pretty clearly links to them.

      Similar to its flight search.

      It is specifically because it is a search engine and not a marketplace that I find it so useful.

    • Re: eh what? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It makes up for Amazons search engine being absolute dogshit

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nasch ( 598556 )

      You saw this part right?

      Although Google Shopping may look like a marketplace, it really isn't. Amazon and eBay operate shopping platforms that connect sellers with buyers and offer protections like money-back guarantees. Google, by contrast, sends shoppers off its site after they click on an item, and thus has no visibility into what happens after the transaction.

  • A Google executive found a high-end Bluetooth headset selling at a steep discount on Google Shopping website earlier this year. He placed the order, but much to his surprise, the headset never arrived at his doorstep. ...

    Geez, and this guy is an executive at Google?

  • This is the problem with globalization (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The main problem with globalization is that we need to rely on corporations, such as Google, to investigate and punish fraud. Although Google did the right thing in this case, they're doing the wrong thing in far too many cases.

    Personally, I think that globalization is just a bad idea. Neverthless, the corporations love it because it gives them immense power and profits.

  • A Google executive found a high-end Bluetooth headset selling at a steep discount on Google Shopping website earlier this year. He placed the order, but much to his surprise, the headset never arrived at his doorstep. He tried calling the seller, but it turned out that the number listed on the website was disconnected, and the merchant wasn't based in the US, as the website had indicated. Instead of kicking the seller off the website, Google launched an investigation and it soon realized the problem ran too deep.

    Now, see ... when that happens to me I start wondering whether this is a scam ... I suppose Google executives are wired differently. I always get a bit of a kick out of greedy bargain hunters. This is not to say that all bargain hunters are greedy, in fact just a small minority of few of them fits that description, but that minority is a pretty reliable source of amusement. Years and years ago there was this case in Germany where people bought a mobile phones from a Swiss company by mail through a magazine

    • I'm trying to figure out why a hyper-rich guy is not only shopping for a bit of electronics himself, but spending time hunting for bargains like a regular broke-ass millennial. Is it some multimillion-dollar headset made from some endangered tree's wood treated with war orphans' tears?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jma05 ( 897351 )

        > I'm trying to figure out why a hyper-rich guy is not only shopping for a bit of electronics himself, but spending time hunting for bargains like a regular broke-ass millennial.

        If he is a young exec, chances are that he was a thrifty grad student not too long ago. Most people's spending habits and general behaviors don't automatically get rewired the moment they get a larger pay check.

        I still peek at the same deal sites as I did 15 years ago, often just by habit. My income certainly changed a lot in the

  • If all it takes is pissing of a large corporation to get sh!t done, can we re-route a few of the annoying daily robo calls I get to google?

  • Product searches (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Amazon and eBay operate shopping platforms that connect sellers with buyers and offer protections like money-back guarantees. Google, by contrast, sends shoppers off its site after they click on an item, and thus has no visibility into what happens after the transaction.

    Which is why Google Shopping has no chance of competing with Amazon or eBay.

  • What is Google's support phone number? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    He tried calling the seller, but it turned out that the number listed on the website was disconnected.

    Haha, someone at Google saying he was frustrated that he was unable to phone a business to communicate a problem? Gee, that sounds similar to the many complaints people have for Google when trying to reach out for support with their purchased products and services.

  • but there's no way that's actually the case. Amazon and eBay are wormy with this sort of scam, and they put actual effort into combating it. The only reason Google thinks they caught this early is a combination of willful ignorance and wishful thinking.

  • Correction (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aitikin ( 909209 ) on Friday May 04, 2018 @03:23PM (#56555952)

    Amazon and eBay operate shopping platforms that connect sellers with buyers and offer protections like money-back guarantees. Google, by contrast, sends shoppers off its site after they click on an item, and thus has no visibility into what happens after the transaction.

    Actually...Google has started to roll out where you buy things without leaving Google. It's still just rolling out, but I've seen it every once in a while. I've seen it show up a couple times (ironically on stuff I wasn't trying to buy) and have backend knowledge of it happening from a sales side of things. Kind of nifty the way it works, but I doubt that it'll ever catch Amazon. The end user is told that their product is being fulfilled by [insert merchant here] and they never leave the Google page.

    And no, I do not work for Google. I work for a company that has partnered with Google on this particular topic.

  • What they did is ultimately good, but how they likely did it???

    A citizen / corporation witnessing a crime and reporting it is one thing. Suspecting one and actively investigating it across international boundaries using powerful spying tools that the police might not have been able to use without subpoenas or warrants is very different. Is this not vigilantism?

    If such capabilities were automated and deployed en masse to detect patterns instead of investigate specific reported instances, we'd start running i

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ken McE ( 599217 )

      A citizen / corporation witnessing a crime and reporting it is one thing.

      Who would they report it to, the United Nations? These long distance internet scams tend to insulate scammers from the law. Google took responsibility for their own problem and tried to fix a weakness in their own system.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Never heard of "Google Shopping"...use Amazon, eBay and Alibaba all the time; never had a problem.
    Aha, maybe that's the problem TFA refers to, then....

  • Save your time, skip the article. It has no details on how Google fight scams, it just tells us it happens.
  • Google Execs should be using Google services and learning how to improve. The story was presented poorly that a gullible Exec purchase led to a revelation about a widespread and known scam problems. In Japan, the news regularly posts stories about consumers chasing deals to good to be true then stuff never arrives. Surprise, Surprise, Surprise. Google should have indicated they were monitoring scam reports which happened to include on from its own employees ( not an Exec should not matter level). Anyway, Go
  • So instead of doing this just from the start, they only did this after a google executive was ripped off.. Shows how much google really cares..

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